Convicted Sotheby’s price-fixer Alfred Taubman is pointing the finger at another board member for conspiring with a rival auction house in a last-ditch bid to avoid going to prison in 17 days.

A lawyer for the 78-year-old patriarch told a three-judge appeals court panel yesterday that key evidence showing that another Sotheby’s board member conspired with Christie’s was wrongly barred from Taubman’s trial last year.

Taubman, who was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, is due to surrender to prison officials in Rochester, Minn., on Aug. 1, but he is also asking for a postponement until the court rules on his appeal.

The former Sotheby’s chairman, who is said to be worth $700 million, was convicted of engineering a scheme to fix auction-house commissions with a Christie’s chief after his one-time protégé Diana “DeDe” Brooks testified against him and avoided going to prison herself.

Taubman’s lawyer Robert Fiske said yesterday that important notes written by the Christie’s chief, Sir Anthony Tennant, had been wrongly excluded by the trial judge, limiting Taubman’s ability to argue his defense.

The notes regarded an April 1995 meeting, which, Fiske argued, show Tennant conspired with then-Sotheby’s board member Lord Thomas Camoys.

“We are entitled to make our own argument, and we didn’t get a chance to do it,” Fiske said.

One appeals judge, José Cabranes, questioned the prosecutor’s use – during his closing arguments – of a quotation that says even social meetings between businessmen often lead to a conspiracy against the public.

The judges reserved their decision.

In court papers, Fiske said that Taubman, who has claimed he didn’t know about the scam until it became public, was denied a “fair fight.”

But government lawyer John Fonte told the judges yesterday prosecutors had “substantial direct evidence” of an agreement between Tennant and Taubman.